There's still time to register for the conference in New York City on December 5th to 7th, 2008!
And there will be a SF Bay She's Geeky on January 29-31. A Linuxchix discount code is available (see the grrltalk mailing list for details) and there are even cheaper rates for students, and scholarships available for those who need them.

The gender inequality among developers and supporters of free software is stunning. Less than 2% of us are women, according to studies conducted for the European Commission. Why? The evidence says we’re driving them away. There are even some pretty good published guidelines on how not to drive them away. What’s missing is a practical implementation strategy: here I present ten relatively simple changes in how you run your project, to make it more attractive to would-be contributors—especially women. Read the rest here

Carla Schroder says she just "kind of wandered into" her current life as a free software advocate and well-known IT journalist. "I don't have much in the way of formal education. But I've always been mechanically inclined - your classic ripping things apart and figuring out how they work. I think that makes open source a natural fit for me."

Linux.com has a wonderful article about our very own Michelle Murrain:

http://www.linux.com/feature/143264
"Michelle Murrain is a great example of what the FOSS community is all about. She's complicated: she calls herself a "scientist turned technologist turned theologian turned writer," all blended into one person. She's also an active supporter of and contributor to open source software projects. She's not a developer, however, and Murrain would really like to see more space for people like her, with different gifts to share, in the open source community."

BANGALORE: With a name like LinuxChix-India, you might think its mission is trivial, but their goal is serious: creating equal access for women to enter the world of technology.

Archana Raghupathy of Chennai started LinuxChix-India in 2005. It is the Indian chapter of the global women techies' network Linuxchix.org, and "tries to empower Indian women to use, develop and contribute to the world of free and open source software (FOSS)."

Globally, LinuxChix is a community for women who "like Linux and Free Software" and for women and men who want to support women in computing. Its members range from novices to experienced users and include professional and amateur programmers, system administrators and technical writers.

It also works to bring together women around India involved in various FOSS projects, foster participation and share knowledge in a geeky world where males usually dominate...read the rest of the article

"Did you go to school for this trade or was it something self-taught?"

"I taught myself the actual craft of putting the jewelry together, mostly from reading books, online articles, and watching cool YouTube videos; then trying the basic functions myself, practicing over and over again to learn the right touch with the wire, to learn how to wrap a loop just so without nicking it all up, to figure out the right amount of pressure to put on the wire to make it bend smoothly without angles. The whole thing started when I decided it would be a great idea to hand make 50 tiaras for a women’s conference - and I had never worked with wire before and had no clue what I was going to do."http://www.theexpressionist.com/2008/08/04/tina-gasperson-jewelry-artist/

Aussie(Linux)Chix and AussieDevChix will have their regular joint
meeting in Sydney before the Sydney Linux User Group meeting this month.
Feel free to forward this message to any women you think might be
interested in coming.

Got any old O'Reilly shirts at home? If so, bring them to OSCON! Be one
of the first 50 people to come by the O'Reilly booth (#313) wearing one of
our t-shirts to win cool prizes and be included in our t-shirt photo
collage. The grand prize goes to the person who has more O'Reilly shirts
than everyone else, so bring 'em all!